Commentary Series by Summer, Xiamen University School of Journalism student

XIAMEN, CHINA: The American media often claims that they are the most professional journalist and represent the most objective medium, such as the motto from the Associate Press “Report foreign news in the quickest and most correct way without any comment.” Yet in reality, they are not.

In 2008, some criminals in Lhasa, Tibet, rushed into government buildings and shops to set fires and rob goods, and they even chopped people up in the streets .Such horrible behavior cost 250 million financial losses and 18 persons’ death. The government in Tibet took action immediately by organizing armed police to clamp down the rebellion. But many western reporters and spread false reports about the incident.

CNN’s web was using a picture of one event in Lhasa, where two military vehicles were coming forward toward two civilians -- in fact, in the complete images we can see that at the time of the military side there were about 10 rioters throwing stones at the police vehicles, however the CNN website intentionally photo-shopped the image to delete a sense of the mob threw stones at military vehicles.

On the same day, BBC covered the same report and used a photo showing that the local police were carrying injured people to the hospital. Nevertheless, BBC insisted the photo confirmed that there were numerous Chinese troops in Lhasa. In March 28th, “The Berlin Morning Post” published a picture on its internet and said that the police were arresting Tibetans, but actually they were rescuing those injured.

Western mainstream media who usually promise to report the real and objective truth to the public, but in these reports about the Tibet, is nowhere to be seen their objective attitude. Those mistakes were not only inadvertent mistakes but disregard the basic principles of journalism. Real journalism requires objectivity without doubts, which should not be controlled by any government, any party or any interest group in regard to hard news writing. Apparently the Western media seem to stand only for the western values and interests to attack China. By reporting the bad sides of China, they convey information to Westerners that China treats people in a very violent and cruel manner, totally against humanitarianism. They aim to incite westerners to criticize and even resist China.

It is really a shame that those who declare objectivity everyday would engage in such false reporting. Being objective should be the most important, especially for news writing. To cover hard news a journalists’ duty would be to tell people the truth about public events. They have an obligation to answer the when, where, who, what, why and how. Journalists just can’t add their own opinions in neutral-based news writing. They are expected to deliver accurate information to the public, which is very different from commentary. A commentary can be subjective, but not supposed to be indiscriminate. When writing a commentary, the author should raise evidence to convince people through reasoning, without touchy-feely or biased sentimentality.

I once interviewed a journalist who works for China-Daily, named Jaden. He appears to be good at writing hard news on cultural topics. He said that all angles about a event in a report are actually based on the values of the press. Every different press chooses different point of view in reporting. However, whatever the angle is the truth is objective and should really exist. Any angle the press chooses should not disobey the truth. The difference, in my opinion, only exists in the writing style not the reality.

Western media frequently do reports on Tibet to make China look bad. But unfortunately the Chinese media should not be deemed unbiased either. Many reports from the Chinese media seem to represent the Chinese Communist Party’s attitude. Chinese citizens face grave restrictions on a citizens’ government or trying to change such situation. It’s time for more truth and to support comparative objectivity.

It is not fabricated because whatever happened in 2008 in Tibet was truth, during that time Tibetan people never came for stealing and robbing in givrrnment property , they came for mass protest that was peaceful protest, later police fired on protesters and that forced people became panic and frustrated and they started burning cars and throwing stones against the police. Because I was there at that time. Reakity is Chinese media fobricated the news. Common Tibetan people came in street with flags in their hand altered image into knife in hand. China always lies there is no doubt world knows it .. china equivalent to zero human rights and fake goods .